One mistake I made more than once was to sell something I thought we no longer needed but then ended up wanting or needing it later. There were several things I ended up buying twice and many times I went looking for a book I wanted to review but realized I had already sold it. I read to my two sons a ton. We were always reading tons of books to them when they were little and I have always read aloud for school. We had tons of books and they read in bed before going to sleep. For some reason, when they moved into chapter books, it became very difficult to keep them reading. The small chapter books were fine; they would usually read those. They loved the Harry Potter series and another series that I can't remember the name of but was kind of a mystery/spy type series for their age group. But they very quickly lost interest in reading. I still read aloud and we all enjoy that but they no longer read anything unless it is required. Sad. One of the things I am glad I did was beginning cursive instruction as soon as they were solid on printing, and then beginning typing instruction as soon as they were solid on cursive. They would use print, cursive, and typing for different parts of their school work so they wouldn't lose it. It worked out very well.

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback. I will check it out.

Thanks, I will check this out.

Anyone have any suggestions of a high school credit-worthy World Geography curriculum? I feel like I have looked at everything and am finding it lacking. I like the looks of BJU except it seems to cover more cultural stuff than geography stuff. Heart of Dakota seems to have a ton of moving parts and I can't see paying over $400 for World Geography. I know you get a lot more than just World Geography but I already have everything else I am looking for. Any other suggestions? I wanted to do this for 9th an then do World History for 10th. If I could find a real meaty combo course to do over two years for 2 credits, that would work too.

Thank you. I will have to think about this and see if I might be able to add to it to make it more at the high school level. Maybe I can find some ideas on line. And thanks for the tip on Discovery of Deduction. I appreciate your help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of this and explain it to me. I greatly appreciate it. It's very helpful.

We are starting to homeschool again tomorrow (2 sons, 9th grade), after not homeschooling since half way through 6th grade. I want to back up and at a minimum do some informal logic classes with my two sons. If we did The Art of Argument in 9th grade and The Argument Builder in 10 grade are those classes of high enough level/content that it could count for those grades? I am really scrambling here because I never planned to homeschool high school and we just decided this on Friday. I'm not sure how to tell what constitutes a 9th grade level class. Would these have to be counted as electives?

There are plenty of fears on both sides of the aisle. Biden has also been advised not to concede the election no matter what. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clinton-says-biden-should-not-concede-2020-election-under-n1238156 This, along with states sending out ballots to all citizens, not just those who requested absentee ballots, has many on the Republican side of the aisle fearing an attempt by Democrats to steal the election also. This concern along with reports of Republican mailed-in ballots being found in the garbage, people receiving multiple ballots sent to them by their (mostly blue) states, the knowledge that there will be tons of ballots being sent out that could be tampered with (and have been in past elections), recent elections that ran into lots of issues with mail-in ballots, and former Democratic operatives admitting to and describing in detail how they have cheated with mail-in voting in prior elections, has many Republicans fearing a "coup" from Democrats. The reporting of this type of stuff is constantly in the more right leaning news reports, just as the reporting about Trump not conceding is in the left leaning news. It seems both sides are scared to death that their side is going to be cheated out of a rightful win. It is also being reported that even if Trump "seems" to win in a landslide on election night, that everyone needs to wait and be patient for all of the mail-in votes to be counted, which may take weeks. This is where all of the legal battles will come in to play and it is why both sides are indicating they will not be willing to concede right away, because they do expect there to be legal battles. I have heard reported multiple times that the Biden Campaign has hired over 700 lawyers to be prepared for this battle and I am sure Trump's Campaign has also. I just wanted to note here that the "coup" concern/discussion is not just coming from one side of the aisle. It seems to be very strong on both sides.

oh my, that is very nasty. Thanks for the warning.

I have access to my sons' phones if I want it also. You raise some good points. I think we will wade into these waters slowly:).

Yes, I think this is true of all social media, unfortunately.

How do you check in? I don't know much about twitter, except for seeing twitter quotes when I read the news.

Good to know. I definitely need to investigate this further. Thanks.

Does anyone have any thoughts about twitter? I need to research it more. I have Facebook and Instagram accounts to stay in touch with family and friends. The only time I use them is when I get an email saying a family member or friend posted something. Then I will get on and see what they posted. I also get on Facebook after my birthday and thank family and friends for their best wishes. That's pretty much all I do on social media. So I need to research all of them further. I have always used my laptop to look at these websites and don't even have them on my phone. I downloaded the Facebook app on my phone today but, for some reason, it receives and error every time I try to log in. If I am at home it says it can't connect to the internet, which is strange because everything else works find. If I am not at home it just returns an error code and says try again later. Not sure what's up with that.

That does sound like a good place to start, thanks. We could use it as a trial and if they handle it well, they could possibly have others they are wanting....maybe.

You make some good points. Thanks for your perspective.

It actually makes me angry and frustrated that the school expects the students to have access. We have heard from our sons that they are the only ones they know of who don't have open access to basically everything on their iphones and we have pushed back on that because we didn't feel it was appropriate. They will certainly have open access when they go off to college so we need to have some kind of plan to ease them into it, while hopefully keeping an eye on their online activities. But I would have hoped to ease into it more around the 16 year old timeframe than the 14 year old timeframe (they will be 15 in Sept & Nov). Now that they are going to public school, I don't want them to feel like odd balls or left out among their friends but I'm not sure how much to allow and how to go about it.

I'm sorry, I just saw where you said you have the password and can access it anytime. I have read that sneaky teens sometimes create another account that their parents don't know about and use it for their "real" account, while updating the other one periodically so their parents don't suspect. My two are not usually the sneaky type but I'm just curious as to what other parents have experienced.

One son is very tech savvy so he will be fine. The other only learns to use what he has to use but tech-savvy son is good at helping us all learn what we need to learn.

Do you monitor them at all?

Well I would have to go back and look through some papers and see if I can find that information. We went to a meeting for incoming 9th graders during the last school year and they talked about it then. I have been searching everywhere for information about school sports and have found a couple of things on Facebook about getting their sports physicals.

I have two 14 year old sons who will be starting 9th grade at our local high school in the upcoming school year. The high school uses Facebook and Twitter to communicate with students so they are going to need to have access to these apps. Additionally, one of my sons has been asking for access to Instagram because he would like to post pictures and the other one is asking for access to Snapchat because he says that is how all of the kids at school communicate, not by texting. Although our sons have had iphones since around the middle of 6th grade, we have kept them very locked down with no access to social media, no access to the internet and no access to the app store. They are allowed to have two educational games on their phones, although they are no longer really interested in them much. They have access to some specific web sites for various things but not free rein on the internet. I am all for allowing more freedom over time, as their brains mature:) but I am pretty much a novice on social media apps. Any advice you can provide would be appreciated, as I work through what to allow and how to monitor them. Also, we have had many talks about what to do and what not to do online and the potential consequences they may encounter in the real world from making bad choices online. Bring on the advice, oh wise ones:).

I have two sons who are soon to be 14 and they happen to be the oldest kids in the neighborhood, of the kids they play with. When the next door neighbors moved in, my sons were 6. The neighbors son was 3 and their daughter was 1. My sons have really enjoyed playing with their kids over the years and view them as younger siblings (they have even played dolls and tea parties with the daughter:). We have gotten to know the parents also. Although we have many differences in how we raise our kids, we have worked together over the years to make it work. Their kids have played over here a few times (mostly the son) but the vast majority of the time it's my sons playing at their house and even babysitting their son at times now that they are all older. With the age difference, it makes a lot more sense for my sons to play there than for her kids to play here. If you make your rules clear, the kids will learn them and it should get easier. My boys had no problem with their rule of not pretending to "shoot" someone with a toy gun at their house (except with nerf guns), for example. They are more lenient on the amount of video game time so my sons just come home if their son starts playing games. Their son knows that too so he won't play his video games if he really wants to play with my sons.There are other things we don't do at our house that they do but my boys know our rules and we have worked through any issues that have come up. It has been so worth the effort. They don't spend as much time together these days as they once did but they still enjoy each other even now.

My dad used to tell the story of him returning from coon hunting with a baby coon in a cage (the mom was killed). I was a very small child, who adored cats, playing outside in the yard. My dad told me to stay away from it, that it would hurt me. He later looked outside to see me holding it like a baby kitten. Danny the raccoon ended up being a family pet and lived in our barn. I'm not sure how that worked because we had chickens and dogs and cats. There were five of us kids and we would go out to the barn to play with him regularly. We have a picture of my oldest brother holding grown up Danny on his shoulder. I was too little to remember any of it. Not sure how long we had him.